Games that offer a truly unique game experience

[Zlaja]

 Harvester (1996)

Nothing unique about the gameplay, but rather interesting due to it's bizarre setting and it's portrayal of violence and gore in old-school FMV glory.

Don't play it while eating.

 

[Softgels]

Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

Cruelty Squad

Sit down little brother, and let me tell you about the story of Redaxium.

 

[KIss My Ass]

I haven't played it yet but The Mortuary Assistant looks pretty damn unique. Definitely buying that one when it goes on sale.

 

[luj1]

I've searched a lot for games that offer Guild Wars' unique flow of combat. None exist that I know of

I have had thousands of hours in Guild Wars. The only thing that can match its deckbuilding approach is Ability Draft mode in Dota 2.

Is there still an active player base for Guild Wars or is it in the past? It looks like Guild Wars 2 is still popular, but I bounced off that.

Only Kamadan (US district) has people.

 

[Vlajdermen]

I'll throw my hat in the ring with Knock-Knock.



It's a 2d horror game from the devs of Pathologic (Ice Pick Lodge). It's the only horror game so far to truly scare me. It really makes you feel like you're trying and failing to reestablish your grip on reality. It communicates its rules unclearly and all the dialogue is in uncanny-valley ruglish (it barely makes sense in russian too), and it's generally too full of weird-ass ideas for you to just go through the motions of horror game #218621. It's like something you got from a dusty ass-end thrift shop, made by people who only ever played one or two games before.

 

[Silva]

"Hunt: Showdown", while being a multiplayer shooter, is pretty original in that it's a stealth based one where you must learn to "see through sound" to succeed, if that makes sense. I don't remember playing such a quality, Chaos Theory -like stealth in a multiplayer environment.

 

[Falksi]

Dragon's Dogma and E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy

Eastern Mind?

 

[Vlajdermen]

Sonic the Hedgehog, unironically. There is no 2D platformer that comes even close to Sonic's unique style of movement and controls, except games that are direct clones of Sonic (and even those are of lesser quality).

You'd think melding physics with platforming would be a no-brainer and yet others struggle to do it well. Even Sonic itself lost it when it stopped being 2D and is why Sonic Mania has been the decent thing from the series in over 20 years.

Adventure 2 and Unleashed were good, once you get past the shit parts and are free to replay the good ones. They're the only 3d sanics that made getting S-ranks a decent challenge. Generations had the right idea with its alternate routes, but you could get an S-rank on the first try on virtually every level.

 

[Theodora]

Have you played Death Stranding? It's nothing if not a unique experience. (And by now, even a lot of the people that memed on it on release have had to admit what a masterpiece it is.)

The Outer Wilds

Hell yes, the system-sized puzzle box is a darling of a game.

Subnautica

Maybe not as unique as some of the other games listed here, but beyond being a survival crafting game with an actual story and an interesting world, it blows other games in that category out of the water by sheer quality.

Bonus points for not being a horror game, but still very able to scare the crap out of people (seen more than one person say it gave them an element of thalassophobia).

What's so unique about Hades? Feels like just another admittedly very polished roguelite

I didn't think to mention Hades, but it is very unique in how integral it manages to make storytelling and character development; that's already rare in roguelite shells, and I haven't seen anything come close in that regard, integrating runs and even your deaths into the narrative and giving even your failures a sense of purpose and relevance to the story. It'd be an absolute shame to skip on all that if you enjoy the gameplay loop itself. (And there's a lot of it, at that.)

 

[Eisen]

Dragon's Dogma and E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy

Eastern Mind?

Damn, i forgot

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

A lot of these games being listed don't seem that unique or is that just me?

 

[agris]

Fallout 1
Betrayal in Krondor
Duskers
NEO Scavenger
Heaven's Vault
Until I Have You
L.A. Noire
Baldur's Gate II
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments
Underrail

**********************************************

All of these stick out to me as "more than the sum of their parts". It isn't that they are purely unique from a mechanical perspective, or an aesthetic, but their totality renders a game that really has no equal.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'll throw my hat in the ring with Knock-Knock.



It's a 2d horror game from the devs of Pathologic (Ice Pick Lodge). It's the only horror game so far to truly scare me. It really makes you feel like you're trying and failing to reestablish your grip on reality. It communicates its rules unclearly and all the dialogue is in uncanny-valley ruglish (it barely makes sense in russian too)

I can make out Icelandic in that speech.

I even made a post about it many years ago on the game's Steam-page, asking them how they created the voice lines.

Their reply was to delete my post.

 

[lycanwarrior]

Katamari Damacy

 

[Vlajdermen]

I'll throw my hat in the ring with Knock-Knock.



It's a 2d horror game from the devs of Pathologic (Ice Pick Lodge). It's the only horror game so far to truly scare me. It really makes you feel like you're trying and failing to reestablish your grip on reality. It communicates its rules unclearly and all the dialogue is in uncanny-valley ruglish (it barely makes sense in russian too)

I can make out Icelandic in that speech.

I even made a post about it many years ago on the game's Steam-page, asking them how they created the voice lines.

Their reply was to delete my post.

Don't know about the vocalizations, but the text is thick ruglish. Other than that, though, cool fun fact. I don't get why they deleted you. What's so wrong with speaking icelandic that they wouldn't want people to know?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'll throw my hat in the ring with Knock-Knock.



It's a 2d horror game from the devs of Pathologic (Ice Pick Lodge). It's the only horror game so far to truly scare me. It really makes you feel like you're trying and failing to reestablish your grip on reality. It communicates its rules unclearly and all the dialogue is in uncanny-valley ruglish (it barely makes sense in russian too)

I can make out Icelandic in that speech.

I even made a post about it many years ago on the game's Steam-page, asking them how they created the voice lines.

Their reply was to delete my post.

Don't know about the vocalizations, but the text is thick ruglish. Other than that, though, cool fun fact. I don't get why they deleted you. What's so wrong with speaking icelandic that they wouldn't want people to know?

Because it sounds like lyrics from an Icelandic band.

 

[Häyhä]

Jones in the Fast Lane

Shenmue series

Snake Pass

Jet Set Radio/Jet Set Radio Future

Killer7

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

 Harvester (1996)

Nothing unique about the gameplay, but rather interesting due to it's bizarre setting and it's portrayal of violence and gore in old-school FMV glory.

Don't play it while eating.

The guy who played the MC has an affinity for Cheese Pizza, so much so, that he's part of that list now.

While Sanitarium is a middle of the road adventure game gameplay wise, and it falls apart by the latter parts, it's certainly one of the most unique feeling games I've played. I still remember it. Its atmosphere is so odd... the whole part with the kids at the beginning should give you a very good idea about how things are going to be.

Plus it has one of the scenes that, even after decades, I still think about as something that left an impression on me. "I couldn't find it..."

 

[ShaggyMoose]

Broforce; no other platformer (or potentially no other game) approaches its level of random stupidity!

Practically all of the Soldak games; a unique blend of ARPG, procedural world building and faction management.

Space Rangers 2; again not based on originality of its sub-components, but how they have been blended into a unique experience.

A lot of the games that would have been counted unique at some point have now been borrowed/cloned to hell and back...

 

[Reality]

Creatures (1996) there are other A-Life games but these ones combined the artificial life idea with computer logic is truly special... The big highlight for me is you can let them teach each other the words for the noun/verb associations and thongs can be accepted as a standard by the creatures without autocorrecting to the right thing over time. Also the unnecessary but extremely moddable biochemistry and neurochemistry system in the game

Majesty: the fantasy kingdom sim (2000): it's vaguely a dungeon keeper / godsim game with the independent ai cranked to 11.. avoid sequels since all are cash grabs not made by original cyberlore developer.

Worms Armageddon (1999) : there are other artillery genre games but it's really a rare case of the father of a subgenre being so good that it killed the genre from growing... Including the actual worms sequels

Twisted metal black / vigilante 8 (2001 / 1998) ... The car combat thing is at it's best in arcadey games with hidden " fighting game combos" that give every weapon a secondary fire mode.. the games without this just get deservedly forgotten After a weekend rental as basically a Mario kart bonus mode

 

[Radiane]

Surgeon Simulator - has this been mentioned yet? (also other "simulators" too, I guess)

Mirror's Edge - similar to the aforementioned simulator games, this one lets you basically slip in the role of someone crossing rooftops while performing parcours. I remember having some heart poundings while traversing through the areas, this game should be tried.

various visual novels - I hardly dare to recommend those, because first, they are so well known, and second, visual novels are hardly anything new, but still, I consider them to be a significantly greater deviation from the well known adventure genre. When I played a VN for the first time, it felt quite mindblowing, and I'm not that big of an adventure genre freak

I would generally advise trying some new platforms, like the 3ds for example. This thing may look like a gimmick, but once you have gotten used to it, you'll see how there are quite a few unique games utilizing the touchscreen of the 3ds so well, but which are hardly ever talked about

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Galapagos. Learn why "AI" in games is a bad idea and how much fun it can be to watch a stupid spider robot die over and over.

!

That's what it's called! I remember reading about that game in PC Gamer or something a loooooooong time ago but could never remember what it was called or find it through a search engine. It was talking about how different people ended up bots that acted very differently; some were very gung-ho and others much more cautious, and then there was the guy that basically tortured it into a useless neurotic mess that couldn't do anything. Thank you. Finally I am at peace.

 

[Tweed]

Messiah. You're a chubby little angel named Bob sent by God to clean up. You do this by taking possession of people and generally making their lives miserable.